Sidney Lumet (Sidney Arthur Lumet) Quotes
For any director with a little lucidity, masterpieces are films that come to you by accident.
Quotes to Explore
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The more success you get, you start to be harder on yourself or more afraid of the looking glass. You have to learn to build a thicker skin because people are paying more attention.
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All men begin their learning with Homer.
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Freedom. And Justice. If you have those two, it covers everything. You must stick to those principles and have the courage of your convictions.
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To his credit, Obama has undertaken a truly ambitious effort to redefine the United States' view of the world and to reconnect the United States with the emerging historical context of the twenty-first century. He has done this remarkably well.
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We don't exactly have the opposite interests to chimpanzees. However, things are not looking up for the chimpanzees, because we control their environment. Our interests are not perfectly aligned with theirs, and it turns out it's not easy to get interests aligned.
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DMs are a lot like email - and should have the same privacy protections as a mailed letter.
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I tell the government, if people have no jobs, you are in trouble. Government will be in trouble. My job is to help more people have jobs.
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In my cranky old age, I actually prefer recording alone now, on 'The Simpsons,' for example, because I find that the director can just focus on what I'm doing and I can do a lot of variations. A lot of times, when I record with a group, I'll stay after class for another hour or two.
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The Soviet Union has indeed been our greatest menace, not so much because of what it has done, but because of the excuses it has provided us for our failures.
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I guess what all artists want is for their work to touch someone or for it to be thought provoking.
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There are some sluggish men who are improved by drinking; as there are fruits that are not good until they are rotten.
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When trying to innovate, most people stop after 10-15 possibilities, failing to recognize that their first ideas are usually the most obvious ones.
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From a pretty early age, my mother realized that I was a little bit more gifted and talented than my own age group. So, she moved me over to play with the boys' travel soccer team when I was about 11 years old.
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A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting.
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If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts.
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If you're smarter than me, you shouldn't be reading my books.
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America stands for individual liberty, but that means an ordered liberty.
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I don't like looking outrageous.
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You deserve to live. You deserve to be alive.
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I find the stuff that is exciting to me are the films coming out of Taiwan and Iran and France. So I have the feeling I'm not making the films that American distributors want to make.
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I'd rather not make films than make bad ones.
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I think the reason novels are regarded to have so much more 'information' than films is that they outsource the scenic design and cinematography to the reader... This, for me, is a powerful argument for the value and potency of literature specifically. Movies don't demand as much from the player. Most people know this; at the end of the day you can be too beat to read but not yet too beat to watch television or listen to music.
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For any director with a little lucidity, masterpieces are films that come to you by accident.
